This invention relates broadly to machines which will transfer individual growing plants from an array of such plants to a transplanted location.
The most commonly known method and machine for transplanting plants, as a machine travels over the ground, is an arrangement wherein a person, while seated on the machine, manually takes one plant at a time from a group or array of plants and deposits each plant in a setting mechanism. The maximum speed of such techniques is generally limited by the rate at which a person can pick up a plant and place it in the transfer mechanism.
A number of other prior art patents are known which attempt to increase the speed of planting by some sort of mechanized device utilizing tapes, belts, ribbons, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,156,395 broadly describes a method and machine for removing a plurality of plants from an array and transplanting the plants on an individual basis through the use of a plurality of conveyors. This patent particularly describes an input conveyor system which will handle a web of plant carrying containers which are relatively fixed thereto in rows and ranks. Each successive rank of the array is pushed upwardly from the web and deposited on a pivoting plate which permits the individual plants to fall by gravity onto a belt-type conveyor. The plants are then transferred to another belt-type conveyor moving in a direction transverse the direction of the path of the first conveyor.
While the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,156,395 is adequate in its handling of the web and ejection of individual plants from the web, a more reliable and efficient technique of transferring the individual plants to a transplanting location is necessary in order to achieve high, efficient production rates.